SEATTLE — Jews all over the world are still stunned by the brutality of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians.
Feelings are still raw and difficult to talk about. KING 5's Joyce Taylor sat down with Seattle Rabbi Daniel Weiner who says the pain runs deep.
Weiner is a Temple Di Hirsch Sinai rabbi in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. He spoke about the heartbreak his congregation feels and the unexpected silence from friends and faith leaders.
"We are a small people, about 15 million throughout the world, the two largest populations of Jews are in the United States and in Israel," Weiner said. "We all have connections, friends, family who are in Israel, and with such a small population, all of us inevitably have direct connections to those who were murdered or one or two degrees of separation from those who were murdered."
Taylor: What was your original reaction?
Weiner: My initial reaction was, on the one hand, some degree of disbelief, but also a deep and abiding hurt, and a, I think, a rude awakening that our most cynical and darkest expectations of what those who hate us want to do, that that level of savagery and barbarism was still possible.
Taylor: Is there anything that is the most terrifying about the moment we are in?
Weiner: We expected that, just as we have been there for those in need in their time of need, we expected that that would be reciprocated for us. Suddenly we're recognizing that that doesn't apply to Jews. It applies to every other vulnerable people, but we Jews, despite our disproportionate support of social justice efforts and support of those most vulnerable, that when our vulnerability is evident, many of those folks are not there for us. And that has been a shock and a painful realization for so many of us in the Jewish community.
Taylor: Do you feel abandoned by the faith community?
Weiner: So many of us in the Jewish community have felt isolated, abandoned, threatened, and harassed, in ways that were unimaginable to us prior to Oct. 7.
Taylor: I can feel your disappointment in that, and your sadness.
Weiner: It’s a painful sadness. There certainly is a sense of anxiety, but there, there's just a profound pain and sadness that the mutating virus of antisemitism continues to metastasize and continues to stick in the hearts of those who we looked at as friends and allies.
Taylor: Antisemitism since this horrific event is up 400%. How is antisemitism manifesting here in the Pacific Northwest with your congregation of some 5,000 people?
Weiner: I think we're certainly hearing from so many folks about the horrific things that are being expressed and posted online. What's heartbreaking to me is our children now are experiencing a different kind, but a level of antisemitism that our parents and our grandparents experienced. I'm hearing from people that they're afraid to wear their Stars of David, they're afraid to wear a yarmulke as if that's what they do on a regular basis, that they're afraid to wear any identifiable clothing that says that they are Jewish, or that they are connected to Israel. Israelis are afraid to speak Hebrew.
Taylor: Are there people who are afraid to come to synagogue?
Weiner: You know, I think there are some people who are thinking twice about gathering in Jewish spaces. We also have to understand that that is the ultimate goal of terrorism and antisemitism is to deny us the practice of our faith and a sense of comfort in our, in our homes and in our in our communities. And that, in some ways, continuing to come to synagogue and continuing to be a part of the Jewish community and continuing to be proud of one's Judaism and to express one's connection to the Jewish community is now an act of spiritual if not communal resistance.
Taylor: There are a lot of people struggling with what is happening in Gaza, with the displacement of tens of thousands of people. Just over the weekend, at least five hospitals were targeted. Israel says it's because they're safe havens for Hamas. And, as you know, more than 11,000 people now have died in Gaza. And when people look at proportion, how do you explain to them a cease-fire is not possible?
Weiner: I understand that it is good intention, if not muddled a good intention to say that there needs to be a cessation to the death and destruction that's happening. I get that. But I think it's far more complicated than that. A cease-fire will enable Hamas to regroup and rearm and will extend the death and destruction that's happening right now.
So as incredibly painful as it is to witness the agonizing impact upon the Palestinian civilian population, again, part of what Israel is doing is not only eliminating Hamas as a danger to Israelis, and to Jews, but it is seeking to liberate the Palestinian people once and for all, from Hamas, his reign of terror.
It is an unimaginably challenging and complex situation.
Taylor: Do you view support of the Palestinians and criticism of Israel as antisemitism?
Weiner: Criticism of Israel in and of itself is not antisemitism. But I think it's the ultimate intention of that criticism is the dividing line, if one criticizes Israel because you want it to better align with its founding values and with the values and principles and ideals of liberal democracies, that's a legitimate criticism. If your criticism of Israel is with the intention of denying the Jewish people a right to sovereignty and security, and to profess, the ultimate goal and desire to eradicate the State of Israel, and to liquidate its Jewish population by any means necessary. That is antisemitism.
Taylor: Is there so much anger and pain around this, that people can't even consider conversation, let alone reconciliation?
Weiner: The moment in general is just too raw right now. But I'm hoping that we can have substantive conversations in which we are truly able to hear one another's narratives. But I think that also requires us to better understand and to have a substantive self-education in what that narrative is based on the history and the facts, not the rhetoric and the memes in the social justice posts and the slogans.
Taylor: Do you think everything that's happening right now is going to make peace between Palestinians and Jewish people, Israel more elusive?
Weiner: I'm hoping that this will produce enough tumult and enough transformative, dramatic change both amongst Israelis and amongst Palestinians and their supporters in the region, to perhaps reconfigure and reset the terms of the conversation ultimately, and that perhaps, a recognition that the status quo is untenable will inspire enough courageous leadership on both sides to make the concessions and to embrace the possibility for peace that I think still is available to us.
Taylor: Is that the way forward in your mind is that the only way forward?
Weiner: I think that's the only way forward. Because if not, there's just going to be continuing cycles of violence and recrimination that I think will be devastating to the people of Israel and will condemn Palestinians to yet more generations of squalor and suffering.
Watch the extended interview with Daniel Weiner here: